“This is bad, it’s wrong, and it’s immoral. And somebody needs to say that.” Somebody did.
“Rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small,” says venture capitalist Nick Hanauer in a recent TED talk. His speech has gone viral in social media because Hanauer is a hipper version of Warren Buffet—he’s saying the same things but he invests in Amazon.com not GEICO. The speech is light on details, […]
Imagine a train rolling down a track. (No, this has nothing to do with the Atlas Shrugged movie opening on April 15th.) Now imagine a middle aged man who drives his Cadillac Escalade around the railroad crossing arm with its blinking red lights and parks on the train track. The train’s whistle screams at the […]
It is amusing to see someone get excited about an IRS refund. He dances around and shouts, “I got $2,000! Partyyyyyy!!!” Hey, you really screwed the government, huh? Shmuck. The IRS loves to “give” you that money. Every refund represents a happy sheep. It’s the First Law of Parasites: Don’t kill the host. That refund […]
Peter Wehner looks at two recent statements of leftist economic principles from Michael Moore and Robert Reich that are remarkably honest and revealing.
The Federal Reserve recently announced that it would establish rules governing the pay of employees at essentially all bank and financial corporations in the United States.
Chrysler has filed for bankruptcy. The only good thing about the prospect of automakers going into bankruptcy was that it was a chance for the government to un-do the damage it did by coercing them to meet the unsustainable terms of the auto unions. They could have removed the debts to the unions and called […]
The National Summit on the economy held at the Renaissance Center here in Detroit has ended on a sad note, provided by Nolan Finley, editor of the slightly conservative Detroit News. In his editorial Mr. Finley laments the fact that nobody seems to care about business and industry any more: “Since January, corporate America has […]
This post was born as a huge comment to Myrhaf’s post here. As Milton Friedman correctly wrote, inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. By extension, therefore, so is deflation — which is why, contrary to mainstream economists, we are not in a truly deflationary period at present, insofar as there is no reduction […]
As a proud owner of a MINI Cooper, I was aghast to see MINI calling for a “Let’s Not Motor Day”. We had an Earth Hour where we’re supposed to turn off the lights and we’ve had a Buy Nothing Day. But those were put on by anti-consumer types; this “Let’s Not Motor Day” is […]
The European antitrust regulator has just announced it will fine Intel Corporation $1.44 billion (1.06 billion euros) because it “harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for computer chips for many years.” It did this, essentially, by discounting the price it sold chips to stores that agreed […]
Powerline writes: You are about to become the proud owner of a controlling interest in General Motors–well, you and tens of millions of fellow taxpayers, anyway. A deal has been struck that tries to keep GM out of bankruptcy. As I understand it, the deal is contingent on GM providing a turnaround plan that is […]
One company refusing to be shackled, FedEx, backed out of a $7 billion Boeing order after Congress threatened to unleash the hordes of the wealth-plundering Teamsters on them, as reported by today’s Wall Street Journal, “FedEx Threatens to Cancel Jet Orders.” Actually, FedEx did not “threaten” to cancel the order, it was arranged in their […]
To the surprise of no one who understands capitalism, hybrid cars are not selling. The powers that be in our government want Americans to buy and drive hybrid vehicles, to save the earth from the putative anthropogenic global warming crisis. So the government either mandates the production of such vehicles outright, or “encourages” their production in […]
I don’t normally watch The Daily Show, but I caught part of an episode by accident today. In it, Jon Stewart was grilling a former Republican congressman about his opposition to Obama’s massive “bailout.” Stewart had this Republican on the ropes because he was able to control the language of their discussion and this hapless […]
Just a quick note on this Madoff scandal. I keep hearing that people and fund managers were investing with Madoff, in spite of misgivings, because he “showed results.” I can’t help thinking how similar it is to the characters who invested with the “playboy” version of Francisco D’Anconia, because he “knew how to make money.” […]
The foundation of a free market economy is the sanctity of contracts. Think about it: what would happen if a farmer refused to deliver his crop at the price he agreed to in a futures contract? Or if borrowers could opt out of paying off their debt without consequence? What if the government introduced political […]
